BHS Environmental Club Wins Award

The Brunswick High School Environmental Club (38 students, grades 9-12) was recently chosen by the Maine Science Teachers Association (MSTA) to receive this year’s Student Green Team Award, Secondary School Division. The club was selected for this honor in recognition of their ground-breaking 2008/2009 “Carbon Footprint” study of Brunswick High School (BHS). The award will be presented at the 2009 MSTA Conference, October 9th at Gardiner High School, where club members will also present their project findings to conference attendees.

This award winning club is only in its first year of operation, re-organized in the fall of 2008 through the collaborative efforts of the Cathance River Education Alliance, an Environmental Education Non-profit based at the Cathance River Preserve in Topsham, and Andrew McCullough, Biology Teacher at Brunswick High School. The club’s first year was funded out of an outreach grant CREA received in 2008 from the State Farm Youth Advisory Board.

The roots of the BHS “Carbon Footprint Study” also go back to the fall of 2008 when Bruce Nicholson, in-house attorney and Risk Management Director with Woodard & Curran, a Portland based engineering and environmental consulting firm, suggested the idea of working with interested students to perform a detailed, high-level, and professional quality Environmental Sustainability Baseline Assessment (SBA) of the school to Rick Wilson, CREA’s Executive Director. Bruce’s volunteer work with the students was part of his "Practicum Project" for the Institute for Civic Leadership's "Leadership Intensive" training program, where he is a member of the 2008/2009 Pi Class.

The BHS Environmental SBA (a "carbon footprint" analysis) objectively quantifies and assesses the school's impact on the environment in terms of direct and indirect emissions into the air, the amount of paper and other materials purchased, resources used, recycled and discarded as waste into landfills or incinerated, energy and fuel burned, waste water used and discharged into the local wastewater treatment plant (and in turn the Androscoggin River), greenhouse gas emissions as a result of students, teachers and staff traveling to and from the high school, and other school-related travel.

Students met with school and district representatives to compile much of their data and also set up surveys for students and staff. At the end of the year the students sent their write-up for each indicator to Woodard and Curran who agreed to print the audit in a professional format for the Club’s presentation this fall, along with their recommendations for areas of improvement, to school officials. The study will also serve as baseline data for any environmental changes made within the school system in coming years and for future studies planned by the club.

In addition to their work on the environmental audit, club members engaged in a vigorous campaign to promote car-pooling to school. Students raised money to have "car-pool only" signs made and put in place in the most desirable faculty and student parking spaces closest to the school and lobbied the school's administration and School Resource Officer to ensure that the spots would be monitored and taken seriously by both faculty and students.

The Environmental Club also participated in several fundraisers throughout the year including the sale of "The Sunrise Guide" a local Maine non-profit that promotes green businesses by selling "green" coupon books. The students actively recruited new members from the incoming freshmen class by participating in the school's "step-up" night and making plans for the fall to work on recycling initiatives with the local elementary schools and Junior High.

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“Overall, this group of students put in a ton of hard work and accomplished an amazing amount for only their first year of existence.” – Andrew McCullough, BHS Biology Teacher and BHS Environmental Club Faculty Advisor

“This is the kind of project CREA exists for, bringing together educators, students and community resources to address the critical environmental issues of the day and preparing the next generation of environmentally responsible citizens and good stewards of the earth in the process.” - Rick Wilson, CREA Executive Director